Privatized Suburbia: The Planning Implications of Private Roads

Over the last few decades new residential developments have increasingly featured private roads. Many planned unit developments and new-urbanism-style projects have turned to private roads. This paper considers some of the spatial, socioeconomic, and planning implications created by private roads in the Canadian context. While private streets provide a useful tool for achieving design and density objectives, and for transferring the burden of development costs to those who benefit from growth, they exacerbate social segregation and spatial fragmentation of the urban landscape.